Building a Sustainable Infrastructure

Laying the groundwork for a successful community benefit program requires a sustainable infrastructure that includes two aspects: 1) commitment to community benefit and 2) building basic structures and processes. With this solid backbone, you can build the work of community benefit: assessing community needs, planning to address those needs, evaluating our impact, counting and accounting our community benefit activities, and communicating how we are improving the health of our communities.

Leadership/Culture

• Improving Community Health through Hospital — Public Health Collaboration: Insights and Lessons Learned from Successful Partnerships, Commonwealth Center for Governance Studies, 2014. This resource lays out a set of recommendations intended to assist hospital, public health, other community leaders and policymakers develop strong partnerships devoted to improving community health.
• The Mission Imperative of Community Benefit — Flyer | Card
• Poverty in America, Catholic Campaign for Human Development, part of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
• Principles for Good Governance and Ethical Practice, 2024

Policies

• Checklist for Hospital Policies and Practices (G)
• Patient Friendly Billing® project, a nationwide initiative to make financial communications to patients clear, concise and correct

Partnerships

• Creating Effective Hospital-Community Partnerships to Build a Culture of Health, Health Research & Educational Trust and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
• Ministering Together: A Step-by-Step Guide for Collaboration with Catholic and other Community Partners, CHA, 2003
• Factors Influencing the Success of Collaboration, Bridges Out of Poverty: Strategies for Professionals and Communities

Staffing

• Sample Community Benefit Orientations — for leaders and front line staff (G)

Community Benefit Competencies
Health care organizations differ on how to staff community benefit programs. However, there is agreement that a point person should be named and made responsible for the community benefit program, keeping in mind that other persons from throughout the organization also will be involved.

Most hospitals find they need a full-time staff member to coordinate efforts within the organization. A growing number of hospitals and health systems are developing a full staff of public health and other professionals to work in community benefit and community health improvement.

Competencies needed by community benefit professionals include:

• Experience carrying out community benefit and/or public health and community health improvement initiatives, particularly assessment and program planning, implementation and evaluation.
• Understanding of public health, such as knowledge of health status of populations, health disparities, determinants of health and illness, prevention and health promotion strategies.
• Ability to work collaboratively with community members and other organizations.
• Ability to work collaboratively with the other departments or groups in the organization that are essential to carrying out the organization’s community benefit work, including finance, planning and communications.
• Ability to use technology to increase effectiveness of community benefit efforts, including use of Web-based public health resources in assessment and planning, software for tracking and reporting community benefit and social media to share information about the organization’s community benefit work.
• Knowledge and experience in working with minority and vulnerable populations.

• Learn More
• Order a copy of the Guide